Pidgin: Stop SPAM
Some of the information below are taken from here.
For those who don’t know, I use Pidgin (formerly Gaim) for instant messenging on both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It supports MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ and various other protocols. Recently I’ve been receiving a lot of SPAM through the Yahoo Messenger network. So I found a plugin called Bot Sentry which prevents contacts who are not on your contact list to message you. And you have the option to challenge unknown contacts by throwing them a question. If they answer the question correctly, then they are allowed to message you. Installation of the plugin for Windows is fairly straight-forward. Below are instructions for Ubuntu users.
Ubuntu users
1. Make sure you have the following packages:
sudo aptitude install build-essential pidgin-dev checkinstall
2. Download and extract the file “bot-sentry-1.1.0.tar.bz2″ from the link above and run the following code inside the directory:
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall
3. For some users, you need to copy the plugin over in order for it to work:
sudo cp /usr/local/lib/bot-sentry.* /usr/lib/purple-2/.
4. Restart Pidgin and go to Tools>Plugins, you should now see Bot Sentry listed.